A new report published by the Higher Education Policy Institute highlights the ongoing decline of formal language learning in the UK at all educational levels. Recruitment of language teachers in 2024 reached only 43% of the government target; under 3% of A-levels taken in 2024 were in Modern Foreign Languages, Classical Subjects, Welsh (Second Language) and Irish; and undergraduate enrolments in ‘Language and Area Studies’ have fallen by 20% over a period of 5 years.
The report authored by Megan Bowler, DPhil student and lecturer in the University of Oxford’s Faculty of Classics, highlights that universities have a key role to play in sustaining the pipeline and addressing a decline in provision that has seen 17 post-1992 universities lose their modern languages degrees since 2014, bringing total closures to 28 and leaving modern languages in just 10. Meanwhile a 2024 survey by the University Council for Languages (UCFL) indicates ‘concerns about staffing, departmental restructurings, upcoming curriculum review and financial cuts across Russell Group universities’.
As the report makes clear, the decline of languages provision in schools makes it all the more important that universities should provide outreach and public engagement opportunities for schools and make Institution-Wide Language Provision – language learning outside a main degree programme – a priority.
A key theme of the report is that ‘now is the time to invest in, rather than cut, the provision of languages’. In addition to the well-documented economic benefits of language skills for sustaining the UK’s competitiveness, the report highlights the importance of the cognitive and communicative skills involved in language learning and linguistically focused analysis as a crucial part of equipping students for the digital age.
Katrin Kohl
Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages
Chair of the Committee for the Language Centre
University of Oxford
